Feasting on the Gospels--John, Volume 2

A Feasting on the Word Commentary

Cynthia A. Jarvis, E. Elizabeth Johnson

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781611645583
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Commentaire biblique

Feasting on the Gospels follows up on the success of the Feasting on the Word series with all new material on the most prominent and preached-on New Testament books, the four Gospels.

With contributions from a diverse and respected group of scholars and pastors, Feasting on the Gospels covers every single passage in the Gospels, making it suitable for both lectionary and nonlectionary use. Moreover, these volumes incorporate the unique format of Feasting on the Word, with four perspectives for preachers to choose from for each Gospel passage: theological, pastoral, exegetical, and homiletical.

John 10:1–6

1“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

Theological Perspective

This passage comes immediately after the story of the healing of a blind man. The blind man claims in awe that Jesus must be sent from God to do the things he has done. The Pharisees are challenging the claims that Jesus is from God, though, because of the lack of external markers—for example, he came from Galilee and not from Bethlehem—and because he heals on the Sabbath. In other words, they believe that Jesus cannot be from God because he does not bear the expected indications of being the Messiah.

In answer to them, Jesus describes a scene that should have been very familiar to them, the common practice of shepherds who enclose their sheep in a communal pen for safety. In the Palestine of the day, shepherds often secured their sheep communally, several flocks to a sheep pen. There was a gate or an opening to the pen that was guarded to prevent sheep from escaping or strangers from entering. Legitimate shepherds have access through the gate, but those who come in otherwise, Jesus asserts, do so only in order to steal or destroy the sheep.

A different metaphor is possibly more familiar to today’s urban person: the electronic car entry key, which I will call the “clicker.” When my car is parked, for example, in a parking lot, I usually lock it. When I click my car key, it sends out an electronic signal, calling my car as it is parked among a hundred more cars, and my car responds by locking or unlocking itself (or by beeping in panic if I press a different button). My car, out of the many in the parking lot, recognizes the particular signal from my clicker. It does not recognize any other signal from other car clickers. This relationship was manufactured in the factory, or coded in along the way.

In The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the narrator crashes his plane in a desert. There he meets a young prince from a tiny distant planet who has found his way there as well. This planet has three volcanoes and a single rose, which the young prince has carefully tended and protected. In the little prince’s adventures in the desert on earth he meets a fox. The fox asks the young outlander to tame it. The fox explains to the little prince that the process of taming is what forms a friendship and makes each one unique to the other. The parties wait for each other, slowly get used to the other’s presence, and “waste time” with each other. They develop rituals and routines familiar to the other, and over time they come to expect each other and miss each other if one is gone. The fox offers, “You become responsible forever for what you have tamed,” and “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”1

This story about a fox and boy points out the difference between the relationship of a sheep to its shepherd and that of my car to my car key. Unlike car and car key, sheep and shepherd are not born recognizing each other; this must be cultivated over time. When the shepherd calls out his own sheep by name and they follow him, the process is one of mutual recognition, because the shepherd has tamed the sheep. The shepherd has tamed the sheep by “wasting” time with them. They have become unique to each other. The sheep recognize the shepherd’s as the only voice they will follow, and he is responsible to them. Unfortunately, my car and I do not have the same relationship. Anyone, including a thief or robber, can click my clicker, insert the key, and drive it off. We are not unique to each other. I have not wasted time with my car, taming it and teaching it to answer my clicks. It simply does it out of a factory-installed blind obedience.

Similarly, with living beings, there is a difference between responding in mutual relationship and responding out of blind obedience. Blind obedience is demanded when one has positional authority only. It is demanded instantly, not cultivated over time. Although sometimes touted as a virtue, it arises out of fear of the consequences of disobedience. Blind obedience is the antithesis of taming and building trust. Demanding blind obedience, for whatever reason, would be stealing and robbing the personhood—the free will, love, and trust—of the other person.

When Jesus describes a mutual relationship that arises out of time wasted and trust earned, he is claiming that authority from God comes of the heart, not by external position or pedigree. As a shepherd tames his sheep, faith and trust are earned and not stolen. The sheep follow the shepherd willingly, because the shepherd has consistently provided protection and pasture for them. Similarly, godly leaders must be authentic, transparent, and caring; authority and respect must be earned and not demanded or bullied.

The Pharisees do not accept Jesus, because his claims to be from God are not supported by external markers. John points out that Jesus’ claims to be from God instead arise from his relationship with his people: his healings and miracles in their service. It is Jesus’ message—of the good news of God’s love and salvation—that proves he is from God.

Why do the Pharisees not understand the metaphor? Surely it is not because they do not know shepherds. Perhaps they can recognize or acknowledge God only if God comes in ways they expect, namely, tradition and the external markers of authority. They are not looking with the heart.

Similarly, I wonder what my blind spots are. Where are the evidences of life in God that I cannot see because they come from sources I do not expect? What am I not looking at with my heart?

SHARON M. TAN

1. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1943), 63–64.

Pastoral Perspective

A computer-savvy young adult might recast this text in terms of a prohibition against “hacking” one’s way into Christian leadership. There are no “backdoor” entrances or gaming “workarounds” for genuine leadership or participation in Christian community. Like a well-constructed video game, congregations and small groups thrive because they are patterned on a set of commitments and practices embedded in the fabric of communal life. Friends and foes are recognized by their adherence to interactive conventions defined by these shared understandings and behaviors. A true leader is made known to the community by the ways in which that person genuinely embodies the community’s core commitments.

Of course, just as gamers may differ in their interpretation of what “matters” in a successful quest to conquer evil, Christians often disagree about what constitutes a core belief or practice. Is a belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus essential to Christian faith? Is the ability to forgive terrorists who place bombs at marathon finish lines a necessary trait of Christian discipleship? Are certain positions on social issues (e.g., same-sex marriage, fair trade, enemy combatants) ethically more Christian than other perspectives? Many Christian communities avoid taking a communal stand on such issues precisely because they know their members are of many minds. The voice of wisdom appears to have no single recognizable tone to which a unified Christian community can respond.

This text, then, challenges congregations to explore the boundaries of their communal faith and identify the gateway through which they encourage wisdom to enter. As part of a global community, Christians reside in a sheepfold populated with the followers of many shepherds. They participate in yoga-based exercise classes and learn meditation techniques in therapy that provide soft introductions to Eastern religious traditions. They relax to television shows and cinema films that depict a variety of moral perspectives as equally viable options. They listen to music that depicts God metaphorically as smoking on street corners (“You Found Me”), steering an out-of-control car (“Jesus, Take the Wheel”), and catching a train out of town (“American Pie”).1 They tune in (or out) televangelists, celebrities, and pundits who claim to know the truth with a capital T. These are the voices they bring with them to church on Sunday, where they try for an hour to make sense of being Christian in the twenty-first century amid so many different possibilities for meaning-making.

It is perhaps both blessing and curse that contemporary believers are not particularly sheepish in their curiosity about otherness. While this interest may not be explicitly religious, the obsession with quasi-reality shows such as Duck Dynasty, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and Survivor suggests that voyeuristic engagement with strangers is an amusing pastime for millions of people. It is not hard to imagine that the advice of Long Island Medium Theresa Caputo might more readily come to mind in a time of crisis than a pastor’s recent sermon.2 Whether these voices represent divinely inspired wisdom or the misleading words of thieves and bandits is a complex question for Christians who recognize that God works in and through cultural contexts as well as in contradiction to cultural values.

What guidance, then, might a pastor provide to aid parishioners in distinguishing between the voice of a genuine Christian shepherd and the clamoring noise of pretenders whose attempts to sneak into prominence endanger Christian faith? One option is to encourage the congregation to name the criteria by which they assess different kinds of advice and ask whether and how those criteria are linked to Scripture and tradition. These are the means by which Jesus believed that Christian sheep would know their shepherd: through the stories of God’s interaction with God’s people from the creation of the world through the exodus out of Egypt, the governance of kings and the challenges of prophets, the bravery of Esther and the judges, the earnest efforts and mistakes of the disciples, the witness of the early church, and the history of the church’s ministry and mission throughout time.

In the context of the Gospel of John, Jesus’ hearers would have relied primarily on the Hebrew Scriptures and their knowledge of Jesus’ life and teaching. Contemporary Christians have access not only to those resources but also to the reflections of theologians who have struggled for centuries with the question of how one recognizes the voice of God and hears God’s call to move out of the fold and into the world as witnesses to the good news of Christ’s presence.

Listeners may take comfort in the Gospel writer’s acknowledgment that the task of recognizing and following Christ was as daunting for early believers as it is today. When Jesus tried to explain the difference between his message and that of messianic imposters, those questioning him “did not understand what he was saying to them” (v. 6). Part of this confusion stemmed from the difference between what Jesus’ listeners expected in a spiritual leader and what they heard and saw in his teaching and life. Additional uncertainty may have arisen from the listeners’ inability to think metaphorically and theologically when what they wanted was a straightforward description of a divine plan for religious ascendency.

They were not eager to enter “a school for the Lord’s service” (to quote from the sixth-century monastic Rule of Benedict3) in order to learn what it means to follow Christ. Instead, they hoped Jesus would offer them a declaration of the truth that might guide them on a failsafe quest to vanquish evil in the world and establish the God of Abraham and Sarah as the one true God. As any dedicated gamer can attest, a really good and meaningful quest is never that simple or straightforward. The joy is in the discovery and development of new skills of discernment and the honing of practical abilities that give deeper meaning to human experience and hope.

KAREN-MARIE YUST

1. The Fray, “You Found Me” (Sony BMG, 2008, CD); Carrie Underwood, “Jesus, Take the Wheel” (19 Recordings Limited, 2005, CD); Don McLean, “American Pie” (United Artists, 1971, record).

2. Duck Dynasty (A&E, 2013); Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (TLC, 2013); Survivor (CBS, 2013); Long Island Medium (TLC, 2013 ).

3. Available at http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0480-0547,_Benedictus_Nursinus,_Regola,_EN.pdf; accessed April 5, 2014.

Exegetical Perspective

Sheep and shepherding were common parts of life in antiquity. As a result, they enter the biblical texts both in references to actual herds of livestock and metaphorically as an expression about the leadership of a group of people. Both biblical and nonbiblical sources attest to the shepherd as a conventional metaphor for a leader or king. In the Old Testament, David’s role as a shepherd becomes a qualification to fight Goliath (1 Sam. 17:34–35), and he is later identified as a shepherd of God’s people (e.g., Ezek. 34:23). God is also imagined as a shepherd (e.g., Ps. 23).

John’s language, however, brings specific elements of the biblical background into focus. The parable addresses the question of rightful leadership. Thieves and bandits attempt to sneak into the sheepfold, though the gate is opened only for the legitimate shepherd (vv. 1–3). Although there were many elements of shepherding that were familiar to his readers, John centers in on the metaphor of the shepherd as leader of a group of people.

Ezekiel 34 uses the shepherding metaphor in a similar way and thus may provide a helpful comparison. Ezekiel also uses shepherding as a metaphor for leadership of God’s people, and indicates a conflict over the leadership of the sheep. Through the prophet, God accuses the shepherds of Israel of feeding themselves and not tending the sheep (Ezek. 34:1–4). God intends to rescue the sheep, first as shepherd (Ezek. 34:11–16), and th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Editorial Board
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Series Introduction
• “The Jews” in the Fourth Gospel
• John 10:1–6
• John 10:7–10
• John 10:11–18
• John 10:19–30
• John 10:31–39
• John 10:40–42
• John 11:1–6
• John 11:7–16
• John 11:17–27
• John 11:28–37
• John 11:38–44
• John 11:45–54
• John 11:55–12:11
• John 12:12–19
• John 12:20–26
• John 12:27–36a
• John 12:36b–43
• John 12:44–50
• John 13:1–11
• John 13:12–20
• John 13:21–30
• John 13:31–35
• John 13:36–38
• John 14:1–7
• John 14:8–14
• John 14:15–17
• John 14:18–24
• John 14:25–31
• John 15:1–11
• John 15:12–17
• John 15:18–25
• John 15:26–16:4a
• John 16:4b–15
• John 16:16–24
• John 16:25–33
• John 17:1–5
• John 17:6–10
• John 17:11–13
• John 17:14–19
• John 17:20–26
• John 18:1–11
• John 18:12–18
• John 18:19–24
• John 18:25–27
• John 18:28–38a
• John 18:38b–19:7
• John 19:8–16a
• John 19:16b–25a
• John 19:25b–30
• John 19:31–37
• John 19:38–42
• John 20:1–10
• John 20:11–18
• John 20:19–23
• John 20:24–31
• John 21:1–8
• John 21:9–14
• John 21:15–19
• John 21:20–25
• Contributors
• Author Index